The Academy Strikes Back is the concluding presentation of a two-year
project aimed at the current academicization of art education. The
project takes place within the context of the European Artistic
Research Network and was developed by Jan Cools (Sint-Lukas, Brussels)
and Henk Slager (maHKU, Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and
Design).

The project’s starting point is the importance of artistic research
for formulating competencies, learning outcomes and didactic
strategies in art education. Previous events were A Certain Ma-Ness,
(Amsterdam, March 2008) with a.o. Simon Sheikh, Jan Verwoert,
Clementine Deliss, Mick Wilson, Bart Verschaffel, and Becoming
Bologna, (IUAV, Venice, June 2009) with a keynote by Daniel Birnbaum,
that took place within the framework of the 53rd Venice Biennale.

During The Academy Strikes Back the specificity of the Academy as a
research environment is at the forefront of our enquiry and debate.
How can artistic (doctoral) research contribute to the overall
research environment at the Academy? To investigate this, three
doctoral researchers (Jeremiah Day, Clodagh Emoe, Paul Landon) have
been invited to do workshops, based on their own research projects,
for the Brussels master students. Documentation about the various ways
that (doctoral) research can be embedded in the structure of the
Graduate School is on display in the Sint-Lukas Gallery (June 5 –
20, 2010).

As a consequence of the institutionalization of the artistic research
environment, it is inevitable that the debate about the specificity of
the Academy is being brought back into the Academy where it most
urgently belongs. The symposium will elaborate on this by asking four
specialists the following sub-questions:

– Can the academicized Art Academy still offer a viable space and
platform for the experimental development of a critical art practice?
– Is there an affirmative relationship between institutionalized
artistic research and the art scene?
– How transparent is ‘peer reviewing’ in the art world and what role
can it play in academicized art education?
– How can the outcomes of artistic research be disseminated?

This panel, organized by the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee and
Leonardo/ISAST, brings together a diverse group of outstanding
researchers and artists, academy and industry professionals,
educators, and government officials to discuss the future of education
in its broadest sense, encompassing both formal and informal learning.

New digital technologies for human expression and communication have
given birth to a 24/7-connected worldwide community that offers
individuals and institutions a myriad of new models for shared,
interactive learning. Information from a variety of digital devices
that we now carry with us at all times is reshaping the way we
perceive the world and interact with it. Online collaboration and
social networking now play a major role in how we acquire and spread
knowledge.

How can educational institutions take advantage of the increasing
popularity and dissemination of these technologies? How can
individuals and institutions benefit from the massive increase of
participatory and collaborative learning in our society? What are the
major challenges in education today, in the sciences and the
humanities? What are the new educational trends and paradigms for the
coming decades? What kind of new learning contexts can be created
outside of traditional institutions?

The recent MacArthur report on The Future of Learning Institutions in
the Digital Age provides one set of responses to these questions. This
panel continues the conversation.

This panel, organized by the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee and
Leonardo/ISAST, is a continuation of the conversation that begins in
Part 1 among a diverse group of outstanding researchers and artists,
academy and industry professionals, educators, and government
officials to discuss the future of education in its broadest sense,
encompassing both formal and informal learning.